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Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Find the perfect audience for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching over one thousand literary magazines. In the Literary Magazines database you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to know before submitting your work to the publications that share your vision for your work.

Whether you’re pursuing the publication of your first book or your fifth, use the Small Presses database to research potential publishers, including submission guidelines, tips from the editors, contact information, and more.

Research more than one hundred agents who represent poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, plus details about the kinds of books they’re interested in representing, their clients, and the best way to contact them.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Directory of Writers.

Download our free app to find readings and author events near you; explore indie bookstores, libraries, and other places of interest to writers; and connect with the literary community in your city or town.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Directory of Writers.

Find information about more than two hundred full- and low-residency programs in creative writing in our MFA Programs database, which includes details about deadlines, funding, class size, core faculty, and more. Also included is information about more than fifty MA and PhD programs.

Whether you are looking to meet up with fellow writers, agents, and editors, or trying to find the perfect environment to fuel your writing practice, the Conferences & Residencies is the essential resource for information about well over three hundred writing conferences, writers residencies, and literary festivals around the world.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

Discover historical sites, independent bookstores, literary archives, writing centers, and writers spaces in cities across the country using the Literary Places database—the best starting point for any literary journey, whether it’s for research or inspiration.

Take a guided tour of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, and many other cities. We asked authors, booksellers, publishers, editors, and others to share the places they go to connect with writers of the past, to the bars and cafés where today’s authors give readings, and to those sites that are most inspiring for writing.

Poets & Writers Live is an initiative developed in response to interviews and discussions with writers from all over the country. When we asked what Poets & Writers could do to support their writing practice, time and again writers expressed a desire for a more tangible connection to other writers. So, we came up with a living, breathing version of what Poets & Writers already offers: Poets & Writers Live.

Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Hear from the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine as they offer a behind-the-scenes preview of the new issue, talk with contributors and authors featured in the magazine, and discuss the lighter side of writing, publishing, and the literary arts in this decidedly DIY podcast.

The Time Is Now offers weekly writing prompts in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. Sign up to get The Time Is Now, as well as a weekly book recommendation for guidance and inspiration, delivered to your inbox.

Ads in Poets & Writers Magazine and on pw.org are the best ways to reach a readership of serious poets and literary prose writers. Our audience trusts our editorial content and looks to it, and to relevant advertising, for information and guidance.

Each year the Readings & Workshops program provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops. Learn more about this program, our special events, projects, and supporters, and how to contact us.

Organizations based in California, New York State, as well as in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Seattle, New Orleans, Tucson, and Washington D.C., are welcome to apply for support from the Readings & Workshops program for their literary events.

Presenters and writers who need to submit a report after a P&W-supported event can get started here. Reports help us demonstrate the value of the Readings & Workshops program to funders and help us continue to offer support to writers and organizations hosting literary events.

When the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center asked me if our families would write poems in response to drawings by Vietnamese children for their upcoming Speak Peace exhibit, I jumped at the chance. Our participants are as young as five and as old as sixty. They’re from Bhutan, Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Nepal, and Somalia. Many carry private memories of armed conflict, some the scarcity they experienced in refugee camps. Others still witness a family member's haunting nighttime battles with post-traumatic stress disorder. We had never come this close to addressing their backgrounds directly.

With a grant from Poets & Writers we were able to bring Christopher Mcllroy to work with us and meet the challenge that would allow our refugee families to speak up for peace—and for those brave enough—to talk back to war. McIlroy recently published Here I Am a Writer, stories and poems by Native American students in the Arts Reach Program in Tucson. Mcllroy knows how to inspire. He was willing to coach our volunteers, which included artists, retired social workers, a psychologist, a graphic designer, students, and writers, so they would feel confident in working on poems one-on-one with our clients. He worked with a variety of approaches to address this difficult topic and invited the volunteers to put pen to paper to create their own poems before they started to work with our families.

With this foundation in place, we were ready to get to work with the participants. This was the first time some of our newer clients ever wrote a poem. We invited one of our participants from Ethiopia to choose one of the Vietnamese student’s images and express his response in music. Others wrote poems, then broke their poems apart and put the words back together again in a new order. After three writing sessions we were ready to rehearse. Oh, the poetry! But, also the drama and song!

The resulting performance was, for some, the first time they ever spoke before a group, and certainly the first time they saw themselves on television, when the local public television station’s Arizona Illustrated covered our Speak Peace event. After each workshop and reading, each person was applauded and validated. And, in that space where they wrote and spoke peace, they were, for a time, at peace.